September 2021: Azure SQL News Update

Anna Hoffman — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 14:15:31 +0000

Today and every Wednesday Data Exposed goes live at 9AM PT on LearnTV. Every 4 weeks, we’ll do a News Update. We’ll include product updates, videos, blogs, etc. as well as upcoming events and things to look out for. We’ve included an iCal file, so you can add a reminder to tune in live to your calendar. If you missed the episode, you can find them all at https://aka.ms/AzureSQLYT.

You can read this blog to get all the updates and references mentioned in the show. Here’s the September 2021 update:

Product updates

This month did not contain a ton of product-specific updates, however there is one that we highlighted on the show – the Public Preview announcement of the Azure SQL Migration extension in Azure Data Studio! For those of you that follow Data Exposed, you may have seen this already, Rajesh Setlem gave us a sneak peek. As part of this Public Preview announcement, the extension will support migrations for both online (for migrations that require minimal downtime) and offline (for migrations where downtime persists through the duration of the migration) modes. You can use the extension to migrate to either Azure SQL Managed Instance or SQL Server on Azure VMs. Mohamed Kabiruddin came on the show to tell us all about what this means and how it works. For more information, check the documentation (https://aka.ms/azuresqlmigrationextension) or the release blog (https://aka.ms/azuresqladsmigration).

Not really a product update, but some serious product speed! We had SQL community member Henk van der Valk, founder of FullData, on the show to talk about ways to maximize performance of SQL Server running on Azure VMs. And when I say maximizing performance … I mean breaking world records, so this was a cool segment. You can see his full blog on the topic here and you can contact Henk at info@fulldata.nl.

Last but certainly not least, we had Niko Neugebaur on the show to talk about a blog series on Azure SQL Techcommunity where he breaks down fundamentals to understanding Azure SQL Managed Instance. I’ve really enjoyed getting hands on and following the blog series; last month Niko was featured as my pick of the month! You can find all the blogs at https://aka.ms/sqlmi-howto.

Videos

We continued to release new and exciting Azure SQL episodes this month. Here is the list, or you can just see the playlist we created with all the episodes!

[MVP Edition] Taiob Ali: Managing SQL Server Agent jobs with Notebook Jobs in Azure Data Studio
Alexandra Ciortea and Steven Marturano: Migrating to SQL: New Conversion Reports in SSMA (Ep. 7)
Pam Lahoud: Azure SQL VM: Get the best price-performance for your SQL Server workloads on Azure VM (Ep. 4)
David Pless: Azure SQL VM: Use Azure Monitor to Track VM Cache Health (Ep. 3)
Pam Lahoud: Azure SQL VM: What is SQL Server IaaS Extension (Ep. 2)

We’ve also had some great Data Exposed Live sessions. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see them all and get notified when we stream. Here are some of the recent live streams.

Deep Dive: Why and How Customers are Using Azure SQL Hyperscale, Denzil Ribeiro and Davide Mauri
Azure SQL Security: Network Security (Ep. 4), Rohit Nayak
Azure Data Studio Power Hour, Alan Yu, Drew Skwiers-Koballa, Julie Koesmarno, Udeesha Gautam, and Vasu Bhog

Blogs

As always, our team is busy writing blogs to share with you all. Blogs contain announcements, tips and tricks, deep dives, and more. Here’s the list I have of SQL-related topics you might want to check out.

Azure Blog, data-related
- Microsoft named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Streaming Analytics, Q2 2021, Jean-Sebastien Brunner
- Discover and assess ASP.NET apps at-scale with Azure Migrate, Vineet Vikram
- Innovate securely with Azure, Scott Woodgate
- Azure Government Top Secret now generally available for US national security missions, Tom Keane
- Accelerate application modernization with Azure Migrate: App Containerization, Rahul Gupta
- 5 reasons to attend the Azure data governance digital event, Cindy Na
SQL Server Tech Community
- Released: Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 4.0 Preview 1
- SQL Server 3rd Party Backend for Django v1.0 Released
Microsoft SQL Server Blog
- Move SQL Server licenses without Software Assurance to Azure
- Microsoft at Data Platform Virtual Summit 2021
Azure SQL Tech Community
Azure SQL Devs’ Corner
- LAUNCH: Build serverless, full stack applications in Azure
Azure Database Support (SQL-related posts)

Upcoming events

As always, there are a lot of events coming up this month. Here are a few to put on your calendar and register for from the Azure Data team:

September 13-18: Data Platform Summit 2021

September 13-23: Cloud Summit 2021

September 15: Music City Tech 2021

September 15: RedHat Webinar

September 16: Cloud Data Driven User Group

September 28: Maximize the Value of Your Data in the Cloud Digital event

September 29: Future Data Driven 2021

September 29: Azure Serverless Conf

In addition to these upcoming events, here’s the schedule for Data Exposed Live:

September 8: Ask the Experts: SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine

Submit your questions today!

September 15: Deep Dive: Modernize your Oracle Workloads to Azure SQL

September 22: Deep Dive: Deploy IoT Solutions with Azure SQL Database

Plus find new, on-demand Data Exposed episodes released every Thursday, 9AM PT at https://aka.ms/dataexposedyt

Featured Microsoft Learn Module

Learn with us! This month I highlighted the module: Build full stack applications with Azure Static Web Apps and Azure SQL Database. In the language of your choice, you’ll deploy an Azure Static Web App, which combines the power of Azure Functions and Azure Web Apps into one service managed by GitHub Actions. This application surfaces real-time bus data and geofences stored in an Azure SQL Database.

Anna’s Pick of the Month

This month I am highlighting Azure Serverless Conf which is happening in all time zones LIVE on September 29-30^th. I have had the pleasure and honor to work with other teams to get this created, and I think you all will really love the great cross-service solutions approach to many of the sessions. To register and for more information, head over to the main site: https://aka.ms/azureserverlessconf.

Until next time…

That’s it for now! Be sure to check back next month for the latest updates, and tune into Data Exposed Live every Wednesday at 9AM PST on LearnTV. We also release new episodes on Thursdays at 9AM PST and new #MVPTuesday episodes on the last Tuesday of every month at 9AM PST at aka.ms/DataExposedyt.

Don't miss this Data for Good panel at MS Create: Data

Anna Hoffman — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 23:08:07 +0000

Join three inspiring and accomplished leaders (women specifically!!) in the data space for this data for good panel. Come get candid perspectives about what good data is and how it relates to actually doing good. I'll also seek to understand from the panelists how data tools can help us in keeping our data healthy.

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DEV Community: Anna Hoffman

September 2021: Azure SQL News Update

Don't miss this Data for Good panel at MS Create: Data